on friday evening 2 and saturday evening 3 june 2023, podium ocw presents crimmp_38: two evenings on which the renowned guitarist seth josel is a guest. _he brings a select group of works which illuminate some of his recent interests: expansive structures, just-intonation, reconstruction and performance art. _for crimmp_38 he put together a program for connoisseurs with rarely performed repertoire
seth josel © leonhard huber
PROGRAM FRIDAY EVENING JUNE 2
on friday evening seth performs a diptych for guitar solo, comprising josel’s reconstruction of william hellermann’s performance piece ‘tremble' for acoustic guitar and jostled bottleneck and ‘tremble 2020’ for mechanically agitated acoustic guitar by nicolas collins, two pieces that place high demands on the concentration of the musician ánd the audience. _hellermann (1939-2017) was a composer/performance artist/installation artist/guitarist in the downtown nyc scene of the 60s and 70s, someone greatly admired by his peers during the time, but who drifted into obscurity later on in his career. _with ‘tremble’ hellermann maps the subtle timbral differences of the acoustic guitar’s geography in a visceral, physically demanding manner _its companion work, ‘tremble 2020’, was conceived by nicolas collins as a kind of hommage to the original tremble, which hellermann himself performed in the 1970. _true to form, collins constructed a particularly charming diy device used to elicit a compelling array of sounds from the the acoustic guitar, and as such complements and expands on some of the conceptual ideas presented in the hellermann performance piece
PROGRAM SATURDAY EVENING JUNE 3
for saturday evening, the piece ‘point/wave’ by catherine lamb is on the program. _catherine lamb’s work for steel-stringed guitar and environmental chord, which josel premiered in 2015, is notable for its arresting harmonies and beautiful textures, combining the natural harmonics of a just-intonation based scordatura with an undulating backdrop which responds to the live movements in the environment outside the performance space. _a strikingly sublime experience…
website seth josel: http://sethjosel.de/
click here to download the extensive program newsheet (.pdf - 71 KB)